PopMech travels to Tomilino, Russia, to a factory that has been building Russian spacesuits for 60-plus years.

Step Inside the Russian Spacesuit Factory

Step Inside the Russian Spacesuit Factory

The town of Tomilino, some 16 miles southeast of Moscow, is rather unassuming about its role in the history of space exploration. A snack kiosk and a shaky sign for a bus stop are about all there is to greet a visitor getting off the commuter train. There is no statue of the world's first cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, in his bright-orange spacesuit waving to earthlings after his successful landing. But that's a shame, because Tomilino is the home of the world's few workshops where space travelers can get their outfits.

Established in October 1952, top-secret Factory No. 918 developed all Russian spacesuits along with numerous life-support and safety systems, including catapult chairs for military pilots, various protective gear, and even space-based toilets and showers. With the work no longer classified, the company, renamed Zvezda (Star), carries on its unique and often dangerous experimental work for aviation and space here: Minutes after I passed through security into Zvezda's campus, a loud bang shook the air. "A catapult just went off," my guide said.

Most of the out-of-this-world artifacts developed at Zvezda over its six-decade history are now displayed inside the company's recently renovated demo hall. Resembling an airlock of some interplanetary cruiser, this long gallery is lined with glass capsules that contain original spacesuits worn by pioneers of space exploration during their actual missions.

Anatoly Zak is the publisher of RussianSpaceWeb.com and the author of Russia in Space, the Past Explained, the Future Explored, just published by Apogee Prime.

The USSR started its foray into space at the beginning of the 1950s by launching dogs on ballistic missiles into arc-shaped trajectories that touched the edge of space. For these flights, Factory No. 918 designed rocket-powered sleds and pressure suits complete with transparent helmets. These enabled a pair of dogs to eject and land safely under a parachute after their rocket had exhausted its fuel and began falling back to Earth. Sadly, some dogs did perish due to equipment failures, including the famous Laika, whose cabin (far right) was not designed to return from the first and only one-way mission into orbit launched by the USSR in November 1957.